How to know if I'm ready?

[Tim R]

I'd really like to try psychedelics, perhaps mescaline, LSD or Mushrooms, however I'm not quite sure how to know wether I'm emotionally and psychologically ready. I'm not mentally deranged or ill or anything like that, however I'm scared. I don't even know why, perhaps I'm scared that I might be damaged by the experience. Probably an unsubstantiated fear, but that's how fear works, I guess..

Is there a sort of checklist I could use to make sure that I'm ready?

[Demeter]

The only way you'll know is by trying. Start with low doses if you're anxious and see what comes forth. However, good trips where you breakthrough to transcendent experiences usually need higher doses. 

Worth listening to this talk - will explain loads and rid you of fears:

 

[Recursoinominado]

It's normal to feel fear, it means you are not stupid. If you do not feel any fear before taking some psychedelic, you must be enlightened as fuck or stupid as fuck.

Psychedelics are wild, unpredictable, and scaringly real. Not like some video-game or some movie but as real as life can get. In a way, my trips got scarier as I advanced because my contemplation got deeper about the nature of things and it turned my reality upside down, a great magical mystery. But that's also what makes them awesome, they have a tendency to put you in a place of humility, breaking down the house of cards you call "reality", making you question literally everything, which is, of course, scary. 

It is a matter of preferring a scary but awesome truth or a comfortable lie (which most call life).

If you decide you want truth, here are my best tips:

1. Master meditation, seriously. Your ability to control your attention and handle strong emotions will be essential during the trip. 

2. Ground yourself as much as possible. All the bad trips i got were due to lack of grounding, my mind was all over the place, my sense of reality was already weak before the trip which only got worse as the psychedelics kicked in and my fear and anxiety got through the roof.

3. Do it only in a place you feel 100% safe and will not be bothered by random people. It is great if you live alone, but if you do not, tell everyone what you are going to do and ask to not be bothered.

4. Do it in a place where you can do any weird shit you feel like being naked, practicing yoga, mantras, exercising, or just laying in your bed comfortable. I personally always feel the need to move a lot, practicing yoga (asanas and pranayama, mostly).

5. Have a plan b just in case. Have some strong and fast-acting anxiolytic substance ready and someone you can call if you need to. If you have those two, you will be a lot more at ease. One time i was on 4g of shrooms and 50ug of LSD and started to freak out a little. I was alone, my anxiety was high, i lost any notion of time and that scared me as time seemed to last a lot longer midst my panic attack, which made things worse. Luckily i managed to text my best friend, he replied to me, i told him what was happening and asked him to come to see me. Even before he arrived, i was much more tranquil because i knew everything was going to be fine. If wasn't for him, i might make something dumb like calling my dad. 

6. Surrender, surrender, surrender. If you are shaking, let it shake, if you are crying, cry a lot, if you are scared, just feel it, breath deeply and slowly. Breathing is key when going through some challenging experience.

7. Listen to your body, not your mind. The body knows what you have to do, it will guide you to do something like asanas, just do it. What the body is doing is giving you instructions to break free from old traumas, stuck emotions/energy etc. You mind will be confused as fuck trying to make sense and often making wrong assumptions and inducing you to make poor choices like call the cops, ambulance or something like that. 

8. Full detox a week before the trip. No porn, no drugs, no junkie food. Be as present as possible, stay away from screens and electronics, spend time in nature, contemplating, reading and writing. 

[Mafortu]

Just do it, get a good friend to be your sitter. Do it in a place where you wont be disturbed.
Dont ruin the experience by watching corny trippy videos on youtube or listening to electronic music so many recommend here.

Lights off, eyes closed and turn your thoughts inwards. The experience you seek will come.

[Moon]

1 hour ago, Recursoinominado said:

2. Ground yourself as much as possible. All the bad trips i got were due to lack of grounding, my mind was all over the place, my sense of reality was already weak before the trip which only got worse as the psychedelics kicked in and my fear and anxiety got through the roof.

Is this related to point number 1? What do you mean by weak sense of reality... sorry if this sounds dense ?

[Godhead]

7 hours ago, Tim R said:

mescaline, LSD or Mushrooms

If you have the choice I would recommend you to start with LSD or synthetic shrooms (4-aco-dmt). There are many people that experience nausea with shrooms and mescaline. If you don't have the choice, that's fine too.

Prepare yourself mentally that unexpected things might happen and let them happen. Open your heart. 

Eat healthy before the trip, have all your chores done, be showered, stretch, meditate before taking it, and ofc enjoy the experience. 

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by Godhead

[Recursoinominado]

On 25/08/2020 at 3:33 PM, Moon said:

Is this related to point number 1? What do you mean by weak sense of reality... sorry if this sounds dense ?

Sorry, only now i saw your comment.

Yes, absolutely related.

Weak sense of reality is how I define the feeling of being ungrounded. When you are too much in your head and not in your body, you create your sense of reality through thoughts, logic, and overly-theorization. This phenomenon is described in-depth in the book "The Betrayal Of The Body" by Alexander Lowen. There, he talks in terms of the character structure he calls "schizoid". They are people that, due to the inability to deal with extreme negative feelings like fear, retreat in their heads and kind of forget the body, making them one step away from the schizophrenic. They do that in order to not enter in a full-blown psychotic state.

Chakra one imbalance.

Schizoid types are basically chronically ungrounded people, they describe this kind of unrealism about life, like their are living in a state of dream, where things do not appear real (in a sense of SOLIDLY REAL). It is like watching life behind the lenses of a binocle, things get too fluid and impersonal. 

I relate a LOT with all those symptoms and most my immediate family (mom, aunt and grandmother) suffer from it, I was raised in a household full of schizoid people that are completely unaware of their condition, which creates a huge shitshow.

I am no different from them, but i have a lot of self-awareness and this gives me at least a chance to overcome this state. 

Needless to say that psychedelics to schizoid people are dangerous.

I have a good experience of psychedelic use but at some point, they got overwhelming for me because i was ungrounded and didn't knew that. The feeling is literally losing your mind, going crazy, which is a big fear of mine due to my family history of mental problems. 

During my worst trips, i remember doing my best to "grab" unto anything that seems familiar and "solid" for me, could be a good friend, a familiar/safe place like a bedroom or even a tree (yes lol in one of my ayahuasca trips i literally started hugging a tree to ground myself).

 

[Nahm]

@Tim R

Eat clean, meditate for an hour every morning & if you are able to, exercise daily. 

Connect as deeply as possible with feeling through things you enjoy, like & love. Might be relationships, hobbies, work, poetry, painting, songwriting, science, nature, mindfulness, etc. Whatever you really love & enjoy, bring more, as much as possible, into your life.  

Make a dreamboard, begin shifting focus away from the perspectives you’ve mentioned (what you don’t want / what doesn’t feel good what you’re worried about) to what you do want, what does resonate. Start talking with folks about that instead.  If you continue to paint a picture which doesn’t resonate with you, since you’re creating discord within yourself, your initial trips will be the surrender or ripping away of that falsity / discord. If you instead create a vision of what you do want for this lifetime, what does resonate with you, you’d have essentially addressed much of the ‘low hanging fruit’ of how you’re creating “fear”, and the initial trips are more likely to be awe, amazement, revelation & wonder...as well as plentiful in terms of insights aligning with & supporting your vision. 

Don’t worry about what to take, how much to take or how to take it, research throughly. Don’t worry about substances, test them with a kit. Don’t worry about amount, just start very small. Think of the trip like you’re planning to go to Disney World. Recognize a thought about Disney World isn’t Disney World, and you won’t have any experience of it, until you’re there. This reveals you’re not actually ‘dealing with’ anything about a trip whatsoever...but rather the believing & focusing on of thoughts which feeling tells you are not true. This develops the recognition between a thought & direct experience, which = willingness of letting thoughts which don’t resonate with you go, and ‘listening’ to feeling instead. Arguably this is the difference between “bad” trips and amazing breakthrough / life changing / life enhancing trips.